Adieu, adieu. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Sweet like antifreeze on the tongues of feral cats
who breathe their last in forgotten hovels or a roadside ditch.
Sweet as your saccharine sweat
arresting strands of hair that lay pasted to your furrowed brow.
It does not do a heart much good
to beat in time with a careless mind –
Shoddy metronome of disregard, and I care too much.

Tempest-tossed albatross that I am,
lying as a millstone about your neck.
No longer buoyed on broken wings, but held fast;
bound with calloused hands that seek but don’t offer.
Of your tasks I might inquire
though you care not for mine.
Unrequited interest is a flare whose glare I should prefer not to see.

Unbound books in a wicker basket –
three for a dollar.
Darned clothing smells of bleach and despair –
rifle through their memories.
I am damaged goods behind the thrift store
with no spot on the shelf.
Aberrant detritus unfit for reuse.